Junctions
by Ancalagar the Dragon Lord
Summary: It was a fate all Time Lords eventually had to face, once they reached their last regeneration. The Doctor/Curator has reached the end of his life, and is dying full of regret, but at the last moment he's given a chance to do it all again. A belated response to the 50th anniversary, and tag to the coming "Perennials" series.


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**The Perennials:  
>Junctions<strong>

"Gallifrey didn't fall?" The Eleventh Doctor's face broke out in amazed joy. "It worked? It's still out there?"

The Curator's already failing hearts nearly broke at the hope in his voice, but laying aside timelines, he couldn't ruin that hope as soon as it had started. "I'm only a humble curator, I'm sure _I_ wouldn't know," he replied, shrugging.

"Then where is it?" his much younger self asked.

"Where is it indeed?" the Curator answered. "Lost. Shh!" He cut off the Eleventh Doctor's response. Then he whispered, "Perhaps…. Things do get lost, you know." He swallowed as a terrible ache throbbed in his chest, and he leaned more heavily on his cane, bloody thing. But he didn't want to revisit yet another old favorite, not in front of his younger self. Needing to get away soon, he said, "And now, you must excuse me." Seeing the continued hope and happiness in Eleven's face, he sighed, "Oh… you have a lot to do."

He started to turn away, but Eleven eagerly asked, "Do I? Is that what I'm supposed to do now? Go looking for Gallifrey?"

Looking back, the Curator told him, "That's entirely up to you. Your choice, eh? I can only tell you what I would do. If I were you… oh, if I were you…" His voice broke for a moment, as he looked at his past self, so much younger, a bitter incarnation now full of so much hope, the sight of which nearly brought tears to his eyes. Instead, he forced himself to chuckle. "Perhaps I was you, of course. Or perhaps you are me." He reached out and shook his younger self's hand. A paradox of sorts, but then again, Time Lord…. He kept a note of good humor in his chuckling, but couldn't help but choke out a secretly embittered, "Congratulations."

The Eleventh Doctor didn't catch on to this, simply laughing, "Thank you very much."

The Curator looked back at him. "Or perhaps it doesn't matter either way," he remarked sadly. "Who knows?" He laid his hand across his chin in a thoughtful expression, remembering this exact moment, so long ago. Then his hearts gave another painful throb, and recognizing that it was time to go, he emphasized, "_Who knows?_"

Then he turned around and began to walk away, using much of his remaining energy to ignore his aching joints and his protesting two hearts to walk normally, giving the younger Doctor no hint (though perhaps, if he thought about it too carefully, he'd guess anyway), of what he was witnessing.

As the Curator turned a corner, he heard the engines of a Tardis from ages past rev up, and then slowly fade away, a sound that was as much a part of his life as he was himself, and then he felt a tear escape his eye, when nobody was watching. He then walked down another hallway and stopped in front of an office, which remained locked when he was working. The Curator reached into his pocket and withdrew a card key with his shaking hands, and clumsily swiped it in the lock, which gave an audible click, and he swung the door open.

There, deep within the headquarters of UNIT, stood the Tardis, which, like him, was showing signs of decay, its doors remaining open for him, so he wouldn't continually have to unlock it with his arthritic fingers. _Stupid, useless, aging body_, he inwardly wanted to curse, but it was a fate all Time Lords eventually had to face, once they reached their last regeneration. He was not immortal, and never had been.

He hobbled inside the Tardis, and this time he closed the door, knowing that he'd never open it again, and slowly locked it. Like him, the Tardis was shedding its many forms, regressing, though it really didn't have to. Perhaps she, the old, kind girl, his only constant companion in this long journey of his life, merely wished to show him solidarity, spending her last gasp of energy on this. He couldn't help but be touched, but seeing her stuck in the particular form that his Tenth self inadvertently blew up in an unusually violent regeneration, with her lights dimmed, and nothing but the faintest blue glow in the Time Rotor, hurt him as much as anything. She gave a small, mournful hum as he looked up at the Time Rotor, leaning against the console.

"That's that, then," he sighed, feeling the finality of it. Even as he spoke, he felt his fourth face melt away, and he looked down at the mirror he had placed on one of the console panels. _Third._ Regressing. It was why he had to get away quickly… what he meant by revisiting the old favorites. A last process that Time Lords went through when they reached the end of their last regeneration. And yet it was different, because even the once younger-looking faces looked aged. It was especially odd seeing his tenth face, when he regressed to that, which looked similar to what the Master had aged it into, oh, so many lifetimes ago.

Were he not already regressing, he thought that the heartbreak as he watched his tenth, eleventh, and warrior forms discuss the fate of Gallifrey, and their hope that it had been saved… and it was, yet their hope had come to nothing… he thought that the heartbreak might undo him then and there, but he held it in well, because he remembered what he had to do, his last task. Tie the last loose end.

His war form, doing all he could to do what was right, even though such a decision was hell to consider, let alone implement. But he was, perhaps, the greatest and bravest of all his many forms. Poor soul, making the decisions that had to be made for the sake of creation itself…

His eleventh form, full of bitterness and cynicism, who had faced his own potential death at Trenzalore, and won, but nearly losing Clara in the process… who had to endure the deaths of the Ponds, and who fulfilled a strange destiny with River Song (one that, in retrospect, the Curator now found a rather bizarre story, even for him), only to never see her again when she went to the Library. He lapsed into a state of indifference to the universe for a brief spell, but then Clara came into his life; but, of course, all his companions' journeys eventually came to an end.

His tenth form, the incarnation with so much regret and sadness welling in his hearts that the Curator couldn't bring himself to face him, knowing what would become of him. The Tenth Doctor had tried so hard to do what was right, making self-sacrificing decisions, yet always losing, even those who promised to stick by him. Martha, who left of her own accord, had the best of the deal, and he even considered going to visit her once before he died… but then he realized that he'd already done so, and he wouldn't do that to her again. Donna, who had perhaps the worst fate of any of his companions, who, in order to live, had to forget all she had become. For a shining moment, Donna Noble went from having the lowest self-esteem of any of his companions, to the most confident and self-assured of them, and though it had nearly destroyed him to do so, he was forced to take that from her. And Rose… one of the companions who had meant the most to him, because she had saved him from himself, his grief-stricken ninth self, so soon after the Time War; the extraordinary Earth girl who swallowed time itself to save him; yet he never learned how it ended for her; he could only hope, and it was entirely his fault that he could only hope; but he'd had to break her heart for a future that he would never witness, and could only hope for.

They all left him in the end, always to a scene so much like this one, and the Curator swallowed back a bitter sob. Looking up at the glass column in the center of the console room, he choked out, "What hurts me the most, though, at this moment, is the fact that most of my life looked like this exact scene, alone in the Tardis, always wandering but going nowhere, always returning to the exact same point." He leaned heavily on his cane, and then turned around, looking around the room, wishing with all his hearts that someone could be there with him… but they all left him in the end, and this was his end.

Even as he watched, his third face faded from view. _Second._ It wouldn't be long now.

"Did I really live any kind of life," he asked the Tardis, "or was it merely a static one, a useless life, in which I acted but never progressed?"

The Tardis could only give a quiet hum in response, but he could feel her sorrow.

He thought about his many companions again, and then remarked stoically, "The very thing I admire most about humans is their ability to live life to its fullest in a short hundred years, but I can't even live life that fully in a few thousand." His voice grew bitter again. "I lived so long but I never lived." Looking back at the Time Rotor, he then wept, and asked the harrowing question, _"How did that happen?"_

His tears fell upon the Time Rotor. _I don't want to go._ The last words of his tenth form echoed back to him, and welled within his heart, stronger than ever. His knees buckled beneath him, and he slid to the floor, sobbing, haunted by all that he had gone through, and all he wished he had gone through. His cane clattered away, and then, unsure of how long he'd sat there, he felt his second face regress again. _First._

His first and last form. How fitting.

He could feel his last reserves of energy start to leave him, and he looked up, thinking about his eleventh form, the last man he spoke to before this.

"But we tried to save it, didn't we?" he pled to no one. "Isn't that what counts?"

Then he heard it, a light step on the grating of the Tardis, and he looked aside to see a young woman standing before him, a golden-haired girl with an ethereal golden glow around her. His mouth fell open in surprise, but besides that, he didn't move, and he said nothing.

"Why should you be so surprised to see me?" the girl asked. "You saved Gallifrey. Gallifrey didn't fall, so the Moment wasn't destroyed."

The Doctor stared at her for a moment, and then it all came back to him, memories long suppressed. _Oh, Bad Wolf girl, I could kiss you!_

Only this time, he remembered _her_ voice deadpan, _"Yeah, that's gonna happen."_

"No," he whispered. "I remember now. I remember you." She sat down beside him, a strange smile spanning across her face as she looked at him. "I didn't save Gallifrey," he remarked. "You did."

The Moment shook her head. "The Time War ends," she observed, and a gold glow appeared in her eyes for the briefest moment, one he recognized from ages past, the Earth girl who swallowed time itself.

"Tell me," he asked quietly, "why did you take that form?"

The Moment looked somewhat confused by the question. "I chose a form from your past, especially for you," she told him again.

"No." The Doctor tried to force himself in a more upright position. "Why did you take _that_ form? Why did you choose to take the likeness of Rose Tyler?"

"I took the form of Bad Wolf," the Moment corrected him.

The Doctor shook his head. "Bad Wolf _is_ Rose Tyler," he retorted.

She raised an eyebrow, and commented, "I'm glad to see you've finally acknowledged that."

The Doctor looked away from her at that, guilt bubbling in his dying hearts. Why here? Why now?

Angrily, he bit out, "Rose Tyler is from my past, yes, but she is a _thing_ of my past. She's not part of my life anymore. She hasn't been for a very, very long time."

Beside him, he heard the Moment ask, "Then why are you so upset to see me in her form? I hear you. I know what's inside your head, and you're afraid to look Rose Tyler in the eye. You know the reason."

The Doctor nodded. "Guilt."

The Moment stood and stepped in front of him, squatting down so that she was looking right at him, and in that moment he couldn't look away. "Why should you feel guilty about Rose Tyler?" she asked in an eerily gentle voice. "You did what you thought was best for her, did you not?"

His frown deepened.

"Looking out for her, yet pushing her away, making sure she couldn't get too close…"

"Stop it," he bit out.

"…afraid of what would become of you if you gave her your hearts, only to watch as she withered away before you…"

"Stop it," he pled.

A merciless glint appeared in her golden eyes. "…making decisions that were rightfully hers…."

"STOP IT!" the Doctor cried out, a newfound energy coming into being, probably his last, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Have you come here, on the last day of my life, only to taunt me with my mistakes?"

The Moment merely tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. "You know, in a way, I truly am Bad Wolf, the very same entity pushing myself into the interface of the most powerful weapon ever created. I saved Gallifrey, I ended the Time War, and to finish the job I saved you."

The Doctor's guilt ebbed away, forced out by an equally powerful emotion; for the first time in many years, he felt fear.

"You're projecting yourself from the very moment Rose first absorbed the Time Vortex," he realized in disbelief. "You're still spreading that message, after all this time."

Bad Wolf's eyes glowed again. "I _never_ stop spreading that message," she told him firmly.

The Doctor felt his limbs begin to shake, but it wasn't from his frailty. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice quivering.

Bad Wolf continued to scrutinize him. The glow faded from her eyes, leaving an expression of almost child-like curiosity. "The Doctor," she observed, "no longer the last of the Time Lords, the man who saved and restored Gallifrey, the man who survived Trenzalore and crossed all the universe just to run as he always had from the moment he looked into the Untempered Schism so long ago, running, running, running, always running from who you are…"

"How could you know that?" the Doctor asked, as another word, another name, rose to the forefront of his mind to haunt him.

"Because I _hear_ you," Bad Wolf told him impatiently. "I hear your deepest thoughts. I know who you are, and yet here you are, dying alone, an old man filled with regret."

So she knew what it all boiled down to. "I was never meant for a happy life," he told her miserably. "If you know who I am, then you know that more than anyone."

Bad Wolf didn't move from her position, but she sat down, still facing him, who was too weak to move, but not too weak to speak. "I am the Moment," she reminded him gently, "the most powerful weapon in the universe. I am Bad Wolf, the Time Keeper. I see the whole of time and space, and I don't believe for a single second that this was set in stone."

The Doctor gave a weak cough, both from his frailty and from his disbelief. _Like that matters now._ "There was only ever one thing set in stone for me."

The impatience returned to Bad Wolf's eyes. "Well, if you want to believe that..." Her expression then turned thoughtful. "But how differently would you think if you know about _her_?"

"What do you mean?"

"Rose Tyler," she clarified. "The very thing you were most afraid of at one time, the possibility of watching what would become of her. Shall I tell you?"

Fear returned to his hearts again, and he shook his head fervently. "Please don't. I don't want to know."

Bad Wolf ignored his plea completely. "Oh, her future was never set in stone either. There really isn't such a thing as fate–not until you reach it, anyway–but with Rose Tyler there were any number of ways her life could have turned out differently." A stoic expression now filled her eyes. "But after she disappeared into the parallel world the second time, there was an infinity of courses her life could have taken. But do you know what, Doctor? The greater part of those timelines ended with her in much the same boat as you: dying an old woman filled with regret."

"What do you mean?" he asked, feeling the old guilt again.

"If you could do it all again, would you?" asked Bad Wolf.

"Sorry?"

"If you could live your life again, and change something to lead you somewhere else, would you?"

The Doctor thought about this. "That depends on where I would end up."

She nodded thoughtfully. "And if it led you to a place you never thought you'd be, a place where you are at peace with yourself?"

"Of course I would change it," the Doctor told her quietly.

"Then why don't you?"

The Doctor stared at her, not expecting a question like that from the Bad Wolf, an entity born of time, the Time Keeper herself, and he feebly protested, "I can't afford to change my personal history. You know that. There are too many variables. They could lead to any direction."

Bad Wolf clambered back to her feet, and looked aside. He watched her, wondering what she was getting to, as she stared thoughtfully into nothingness. Then she looked back at him. A look of intense sadness appeared in her face, and then it was never more clear to the Doctor who Bad Wolf really was underneath it all, and when she spoke, she confirmed it. "I am also Rose Tyler. You said it yourself. Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler. You took the Time Vortex from her, but Bad Wolf never truly left her. Living in the parallel universe, living a normal life, wasn't bearable for her."

He swallowed, but was unable to say anything.

"Before she absorbed the Time Vortex," Bad Wolf continued, "it would have been. Being human, living as a human, was possible for Rose Tyler, but it wasn't possible for Bad Wolf, and Bad Wolf never left her."

"What has she done?" he asked nervously.

"As a general rule, nothing, and that's exactly the point." She sighed regretfully. "Your human form really was there to help her temper the wolf inside her. Her relationship with him varied in the differing timelines. Sometimes it went badly. Sometimes the conclusion was neutral, without them living happily ever after but also not going badly. Some ended with them living their lives together in happiness as you hoped they would, but it was always a happiness with a tint of regret. His regret that she regretted, and her regret that she never would know if she actually chose him."

A tear fell from the Doctor's eyes at that, and he begged, "Please, don't torment me with this now when there's nothing I can do to reverse it."

She ignored him again. "You chose him for her, and she had to live with that for the rest of her life, not knowing if he really was her choice. That is why she nearly always died in regret, Doctor just like you are now." She looked at him, both regretfully and accusingly, before she concluded, "So yes, in a way, you are right to feel guilty about her."

The Doctor looked back at her, this time able to meet her eyes of his own accord. "Tell me, what is the point in telling me all this?"

The sadness disappeared from her eyes, and she looked pleased that he asked. "I see everything," she reminded him. "All that is, all that was, all that ever could be, and all that ever could have been. There is one timeline, Doctor, that could have led you to a different ending, to you dying of old age _without_ regrets, and that timeline begins with a single moment."

Confused, the Doctor thought back over their whole conversation, and then asked, "Centering around Rose Tyler?"

Bad Wolf shook her head. "No, centering around Pete Tyler. The moment which would have changed everything had it gone differently." The golden glint reappeared in her eyes, and she told him firmly, "I know that moment. I am the Moment. And I can change it. So are you willing to do it?"

The Doctor could only stare at her.

"Are you willing to take that chance?" she asked him, her voice growing intense. "To make the one change that will completely pivot your timeline?"

"At what cost?" he asked.

"It will not be easy," she warned him. "There will be problems you never faced, trials that will either make or break you. You will suffer trauma of all calibers. You will feel heartbreak and fear and uncertainty. You will be running a gauntlet, but if you run well, you will emerge with few regrets, stronger and better than you ever were in this fading timeline."

The Doctor looked away, thinking it over. "A chance to do it all again…"

"To change your personal history."

"To run blindly into an unknown future."

She shrugged. "It's what you've always done. Your future was never set in stone."

"To take a leap of faith." He paused. "I'm not very good at that."

"I can do it," she repeated. "Are you willing to take that chance?"

Reality caught up with him then, and he looked back at her sadly. "It's a very tempting thought. But I can't… there are so many variables. If I were to take that chance, and it led me to the same sort of ending, then what would have been the point of it all?"

This was it, the crux of the matter. Bad Wolf didn't look upset at his words, and she had a response to this. "Because there's more to it than your own personal timeline."

That wasn't an answer he expected. More confused than ever, he slowly asked, "You are Bad Wolf, and Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler. Is this about Rose's timeline, and her ending?"

"I see everything," Bad Wolf repeated, "including that which you cannot see, which not even the Time Lords ever saw. There's far more at stake than you or Rose, things which I know but I can't really tell you."

"Can't, or won't?" he asked curiously.

"Both." Bad Wolf bit her lip, a strange sight, since nervousness wasn't a feeling the Doctor had ever associated with her. "There would be no point in telling you anyway, because you'd never believe me if I told you what's been happening right in front of you, right under your nose and you never even suspected: the Convulsion."

"The Convulsion?" he repeated, perplexed. "I don't understand you. And I don't say that often."

Bad Wolf shook her head. "The Convulsion is coming, no matter what direction time takes. It's _outside_ time. It's too big for you to stop, Doctor. All that's happened in this timeline is its delay. But there is one moment which will change that."

"The moment you're asking me to let you change," he guessed.

She raised her eyebrows. "The Convulsion will still happen, but it no longer will be delayed. It can be stopped, but only if that one moment, centering around Pete Tyler, changes. I know that moment. The Moment is me. You have to decide."

The Doctor stared at her, wondering what she was talking about, and feeling a bit exasperated and resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to explain further. Still, it almost made him smile to think that an action committed by one human, Rose Tyler's father, would make all the difference to some cataclysm that even the Time Lords never saw coming. If it was inevitable in all time lines, then all his instincts screamed at him to do whatever it took to end it; and if his reward for doing so was to be at peace with himself, possibly even happy…

Could he do it? Cheat death once again for this one chance?

The Doctor drew a rattled breath, and then, making either the most courageous or most cowardly decision of his life, looked up at Bad Wolf. "It's selfish. It's wrong, and incalculably dangerous." She didn't look fazed by this, and the Doctor suspected that she knew what he was saying, and he smiled, and continued, "But I'm dying, and the temptation is strong. A chance to live again. Who often gets that? Why not? Let's do it, but it's on your head."

The brilliant smile of Rose Tyler appeared on her face, and the golden glow about Bad Wolf strengthened, and her eyes glowed again. She reached out, and placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. In an instant, he felt the golden warmth spread throughout his body, filling him with new energy, new youth. A brightness filled his vision, blinding him, and he heard a powerful singing, the song of the universe, the Time Vortex, and the Tardis, which he'd only heard once before, on the very last day of the Time War… the day Rose saved him, and he sacrificed one of his lives to save her.

When it faded at last, he found himself looking at his own hands in a totally different room, arms wrapped in the sleeves of a pin-striped suit, hands gripping the black handle of a device emblazoned with the Torchwood insignia. He then looked up, and immediately regretted his decision.

Horror filled the Doctor's hearts as he, restored to his tenth form, found himself in a white room, a terrible white glow emanating from the adjacent wall. Time was frozen, leaving him to look at a few immobile Daleks in mid-fall, and directly across from him, he could see Rose, also clinging to a black Magnaclamp, reaching in vain for a lever that had been knocked offline.

"No!" he yelled, even as Bad Wolf appeared before him, looking at the scene resignedly. "Nonononono!" He looked at her pleadingly. "Not this! Not here! Please, not this!"

Bad Wolf shook her head. Her earlier sadness returned to her eyes. "It's too late," she told him. "The change has been made. When I leave, you won't remember your past life."

"No!" Tears now stung his eyes, fearful, regretful, terror-stricken tears. "You said it yourself!" he shouted. "This moment centers around Pete Tyler! There is only one alternative!"

Golden tears now appeared upon Bad Wolf's visage. "I warned you that it wouldn't be easy," she reminded him.

"Is that it, then?" the Tenth Doctor cried. "My life changes for the better if Rose Tyler dies? Because if that's the great secret, then I don't want it!"

Bad Wolf stepped before him, and she smiled through her tears. "Is that it then? Are you giving up already? You once took a leap of faith. You thought for certain Rose Tyler was going to die then too. I heard you." She looked at her other self, suspended in time, about to live her last moments. Without looking at the Doctor, she concluded, "But you will survive the most courageous decision you've ever made, because if there's one thing you believe in, just one thing, you believe in _her_."

With that, Bad Wolf faded from before his eyes.

In that moment, all the Doctor's memories from this moment on, Rose's entrapment in the parallel world, his meeting with Donna, his travels with Martha, Jack's return, the Master's reappearance in his life, his travels with Donna, Rose's return, Davros and the Daleks, Rassilon's attempt to destroy time, his regeneration, and all that followed… all the memories, one by one, flashed before his eyes, and vanished.

Finally, his final meeting with Bad Wolf, and the very end of his life…

The Tenth Doctor blinked, and for a moment, he could have sworn that he saw Bad Wolf flicker in front of him, and vanish, and his mind returned to the present… _what just happened?_ It felt as though he'd lived whole lifetimes in a moment, but he couldn't remember…

Rose jumped from her Magnaclamp, and began reaching for the lever, and the Doctor watched in stupefied fascination, horror as what he was seeing truly hit him.

"I've got to get it upright!" she told him. Then she forced the lever back in place. But of course, the moment she did, the Void's pull returned to its full strength, leaving Rose stranded, unable to return to her previous, safer position.

"Rose, hold on!" he cried out.

It was a useless shout, of course, but he couldn't help it. On average, the human hand could grip something for approximately two and a half to three minutes, before the tendons were forced to give way; but the Void was pulling on Rose, and her fingers were holding back her entire body-weight, which would cut that time by at least half, if not more. If it didn't close soon…

Even as he watched, he could tell that Rose was losing this battle, and he reached out vainly, and she looked at him miserably. Her expression was nearly his undoing, because he could see the hopelessness in her eyes, the knowledge and fear of what was about to happen, but more importantly, terrible regret that she could never fulfill her promise of forever… She was embracing her fate, and he was powerless to stop it.

Then Rose mouthed two words, a farewell, and finally surrendered.

She fell.

The Doctor let out an anguished scream.

Rose vanished into the blinding light. The Void closed behind her.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he could hear a wolf howling.

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><p><strong>AN: This is part of a revision of a series I was previously working on, "The Perennials," an AU story. I took the older form down for the revision. The idea behind these stories has been in the works ever since Season 4 was released, but I recently wrote this to connect "The Perennials" to "Doctor Who" in a totally different way.**

**The new version will start to appear shortly. The first of the "Perennials" stories is called "Eve of the Eternal." The revision for this one is already completed, so keep an eye out for it.**


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